


chun-sae and venkat

by bee_kind



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Co-Parenting, Gen, Platonic Relationships, biracial! Mindy, biracial! Vincent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_kind/pseuds/bee_kind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, why Bhanupriya Hyun-Shik Park-Kapoor is a perfectly good name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chun-sae and venkat

**Author's Note:**

> I have yet to read the actual book The Martian, so I'm going based off movie personalities. Still, I hope this is okay! Just consider it AU.
> 
> Also, I headcanon biracial Mindy Park (being half-white, half-Korean) also having a Korean first name. Seeing as she is mostly white-passing, she had a hard time getting people to call her by it, despite requesting multiple times that she do so. In college she jokingly told a professor that she'd accept Mindy if Chun-Sae was too hard for him to wrap his head around, and it stuck. By that same token, Vincent's name is Venkat, but finding it too hard to pronounce, or just by staring at it too quickly on paper, people started calling him Vincent, and he eventually grew tired of correcting them. 
> 
> Anyway, have some platonically co-parenting space nerds.

“We’re not naming her that.”  
  
“-and why not?”  
  
‘Mindy’ Chun-Sae Park was, at the five-month marker, quite over the whole ordeal of being pregnant. She supposed originally there had been some novelty to it. The sharp shock of finding out that she could, indeed, have children, the cold dread at having to tell what was essentially her boss that their plan of not ever speaking about what they’d done at the post-rescue celebration wasn’t going to go off as planned, the relief at finding out he wasn’t a complete and total asshole and that, ‘Yes, Mindy, of course I’ll help you out.’ and ‘No, Mindy, I don’t have ovaries, so I’m not qualified to say what you should do with them.’ were phrases in his repertoire. Months one through three had flown by in a whirlwind, month four had allowed the dust to settle, but month five had brought her nothing but backaches and incessant cravings. Her feet hurt and she wanted to sleep.   
  
“It’s a mouthful.”  
  
“At least it flows.”   
  
She sends the father of her child, ‘Vincent’ Venkat Kapoor a pointed look. He was grasping at straws now and they both knew it. He shrugs and tilts his eyes up away from her gaze, lips curving upward in a barely hidden smile as he takes a sip of his coffee.   
  
“Nothing about the name Bhanupriya Hyun-Shik Park-Kapoor flows.”   
  
“Nothing about Afro-Indian-Korean-Swedish-American flows either, but that’s what she is. It’s apart of her, just like we are.” She’d gotten lucky, she supposed. Of all the people to accidentally create life with, she could have done far worse than Venkat Kapoor. Her hands settled on the firm mass of her stomach and she shifted in her work chair, trying to get comfortable. The work stations at mission control weren’t made to handle pregnant women -or women in general. Another argument for another day-, but she made do.  
  
“What’ll people call her?” Venkat arched a thick eyebrow and tucked one of his arms under the other, artisan coffee still steaming in one hand. He always looked so stern when he did that. Whatever they named her, their daughter would be getting away with nothing.   
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean Bhanupriya is only slightly easier to pronounce than Hyun-Shik and you know better than anyone-”  
  
“-people don’t try.” He finished. Ease was what mattered most when it came to naming things, she’d found. That’s why people with names longer than three syllables ended up with nicknames and how she’d ended up being called Mindy and how people had glossed over Venkat until it became Vincent. Familiar names were easy to swallow, eased the path of a Korean girl with blonde hair and gray eyes and an Indian man whose lips were just a bit too full and his hair just a bit too curly. They weren’t easy and there was nothing easy about a Black, Swedish, Indian, Korean girl named Bhanupriya Hyun-Shik Park-Kapoor. Venkat finished off the dregs of his coffee and looked down at her over the frames of his glasses.   
  
“We’ll make them try.” She believed him. Of course she believed him; there was something inherently honest about his eyes. “What does Hyun-Shik mean?”  
  
She stretched her fingers over her keyboard, pads resting on them lightly. It was a movement she’d done over and over again for the past four years when she was at work and it’d become something of a comfort to her. “It means Wisdom and Honesty.”   
  
“And what does that mean to you?” What did it mean to her? Was it just a string of letters strung together to make coherent sounds?   
  
“It’s what I want for her. Things I hope we give her.” The corner of his lips quirks up and he nods, more than satisfied with her answer.   
  
“Bhanupriya means ‘beloved of the sun.’” He answers without prompting and he tilts his head back to stare up at the cavernous ceiling of mission control like he can see their daughter's namesake, like it’s not two in the morning and he came by with the express purpose of talking about baby names and not to see if there’d been any updates from the Hermes. “It was my grandmother’s name.”   
  
“What did she do?” Venkat pauses, seemingly pulled from whatever memory he was reliving, and looks down at her, a reserved smile on his face.   
  
“Whatever she set her mind to.”  
  
And it’s then that her desktop pings with an incoming message from the Ares 3 crew.

  
“I’ve gotta handle this.” She says as means of an apology. He nods and pats her on the shoulder, grabbing the empty coffee cup as he ascends the stairs and makes his way to the corridor.  
  
“Bhanupriya Hyun-Shik Park-Kapoor!” He calls over his shoulder. “Think about it.”  
  
She does.


End file.
